Alaa Abd elFattah falls ill after marking 50 days of hunger strike

British-Egyptian prisoner and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has fallen ill after marking 50 days of a hunger strike, his family have reported.

Abd el-Fattah, who launched a hunger strike on 1 March at Egypt's Wadi al-Natroun prison, is receiving treatment after he suffered multiple bouts of vomiting on Saturday.

He had been subsisting on herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts since he heard that his mother Laila Soueif had been hospitalised in London.

Soueif launched her own hunger strike on 29 September to protest the UK government’s inaction over her son’s continued imprisonment.

In a letter to his family, Abd el-Fattah reported two bouts of vomiting on 12 and 16 April, as well as “severe stomach pains” and feeling “very unwell” on 17 April.

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According to the Free Alaa Campaign, doctors have prescribed him medicines to stop the vomiting and protect his stomach from high acidity and ulcers.

They added that the doctors are uncertain about the cause of Abd el-Fattah’s illness but are treating him on the basis that he may have chronic inflammation of the oesophagus or the pylorus in the stomach. 

They also suggested that his hunger strike is affecting his intestines in a way that is causing reflux.

‘We are all so exhausted’

Meanwhile, Soueif has shifted to a partial hunger strike of 300 calories a day after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer phoned Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and “pressed” for her son’s release on 28 February.

Soueif was hospitalised on 24 February due to dangerously low blood sugar, blood pressure and sodium levels.

She was discharged on 7 March but wrote to Starmer warning him that she would resume a full hunger strike if she did not soon see a “dramatic change” in her son’s case.

“We are all so exhausted. My mum and my brother are literally putting their bodies on the line, just to give Alaa the freedom he deserves,” Abd el-Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif said in a statement.

“Their health is so precarious, I’m always afraid that we are on the verge of a tragedy. We need Keir Starmer to do all he can to bring Alaa home to us”.

Abd el-Fattah, a key figure in the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ousted then-President Hosni Mubarak, has spent the best part of a decade behind bars.

On 29 September, Abd el-Fattah was due to complete a five-year sentence for “spreading false news”, but the authorities failed to release him, refusing to count the two years he spent in pre-trial detention towards his sentence. 

On 26 February, Starmer told parliament in response to a question from MP John McDonnell:  “I will do everything I can, to ensure the release in this case, and that includes phone calls as necessary. I’ve raised it before. I’ll raise it again. We raise it, and will continue to do so. I gave my word to the family that that’s what I’d do. That I will do, and I will”.

middleeasteye.net